Biomaterials for cancer therapy: design strategies, therapeutic mechanisms, recent advances, and future challenges

Cancer remains a major threat to human health, and traditional therapeutic strategies continue to face significant bottlenecks in balancing therapeutic efficacy and clinical safety. Currently, nanodrug delivery systems have emerged as a pivotal research focus to address these limitations, among which natural material-based platforms stand out as a highly promising category due to their inherent biological advantages. This review focuses on natural material-based nanodrug delivery systems, systematically examining three key material categories commonly utilized in this field: polysaccharides (e.g., hyaluronic acid, chitosan), endowed with responsiveness and active targeting capabilities, proteins (e.g., albumin, gelatin) characterized by excellent biocompatibility and functional diversity, and lipids (e.g., phospholipids) possessing prominent self-assembly properties. This review summarizes the applications of these systems in targeted delivery, controlled release, and synergistic therapy for various cancers, and outlines their clinical translation progress—with representative examples including Doxil® and Abraxane®. It also presents future prospects for multimodal design, AI-driven optimization, and green nanotechnology, while highlighting their potential to reshape precision cancer therapy. Collectively, this review summarizes core advances in natural material-based nanodrug delivery systems, underscoring their critical role in overcoming the inherent drawbacks of traditional cancer therapies and laying a solid foundation for better, safer, personalized cancer treatments.